✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Life in Suburbia: Land of Cliche (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought)

aaronsw.com · 8,855 words · saved by 1 readers

From my desk in my apartment in Cambridge, I see the green leaves of trees out the window and, when I step closer, winding streets with quirky shops and interesting people stretching out below them. From my desk in my old home in suburban Chicago, you see the same trees, but behind them is asphalt and McMansion and long twisting driveways. No one here uses public transportation. The city does have a train station, but one gets the sense that its purpose is mostly decorative — train stations remind people of the imaginary small town life that suburbs attempt to imitate. To get out to your house, you instead drive down long stretches of drab gray highway, besotted by hideous billboards and lined with ugly office parks. The weather is certainly nice. On most days, if you go for a walk it’s quite beautiful — as long as you keep your head pointed at the sky, where the bright green leaves interweave with the brilliant blue. But as soon as you look down there are SUVs driving the wealthy to t

Life in Suburbia: Land of Cliche (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought) Raw Thought by Aaron Swartz Life in Suburbia: Land of Cliche From my desk in my apartment in Cambridge, I see the green leaves of trees out the window and, when I step closer, winding streets with quirky shops and interesting people stretching out below them. From my desk in my old home in suburban Chicago, you see the same trees, but behind them is asphalt and McMansion and long twisting driveways. No one here uses public transportation. The city does have a train station, but one gets the sense that its purpose is mostly decorativ

Explore this link on the map →

related reading